What’s new
A fair maid’s initiation
5th February 2023
Two new 1840 portfolios today by the great Achille Devéria, including his irreverent erotic depictions of the early life of Joan of Arc to accompany Voltaire’s scandalous Maid of Orleans. See these and the newly-added Library of Novels now by clicking here.
How shocking …
4th February 2023
A fin-de-siècle offering today from the great Anon – a portfolio of drawings inspired by the more extreme passages from Sade’s classics, Justine and Juliette. Designed to make the gentlemen frown and the ladies blush, they still have the power to shock. See them all now by clicking here.
Getting very wet
30th January 2023
A wonderful new portfolio today from Otto Rudolf Schatz, his 1947 Badefreuden, Bathtime Pleasures. Anyone who can imagine and create erotic watercolours like these is a genius. See them all now by clicking here. Bathtime will never be the same again!
Sex on the brain
23rd January 2023
Back in the day – the 1950s and 60s – Wallace ‘Wally’ Wood was probably the best-known cartoonist in the west. SF, war, fantasy, he could do them all. Then when the market opened up to sex in the 70s, Wally was right there! See his erotic work now by clicking here.
A luscious garden of delights
22nd January 2023
Today we bring you the visual wit and fertile surrealist imagination of today’s new addition to the site, the Korean artist Joyce Lee. She has an enormous online following, now you can join them; see a great selection of her work by clicking here.
Very little French dressing
21st January 2023
It’s always a pleasure to share a new portfolio by one of our favourite illustrators, and today it’s a classic set of plates by the great Alméry Lobel-Riche – his 1925 etchings for Colette’s Chéri. A real master of the art, and very daring for its time! – see them all now by clicking here.
Only joking?
20th January 2023
The barbed humourist and critic of male sexual behaviour Anton Kannemeyer has been shocking polite South African society for decades. He’s today’s new artist, and you can see his work now by clicking here. We’ve even translated the Afrikaans punchlines for you :-)
Cut out to be gay
17th January 2023
We stay in China for today’s new artist, Xiyadie, with his autobiographical traditional papercuts portraying the joys and sorrows of being a gay man in a repressive culture – see these works of art now by clicking here.
The colours of desire
15th January 2023
What a treat for you all today – nearly two hundred paintings by the remarkable contemporary Chinese artist Deng Jianjin, exploring the depths and varieties of erotic fantasy. Spend time with each canvas, the effort is well worth it. Deng’s artworks can be found here.
My muse
12th January 2023
Milo Manara is probably our favourite erotic cartoonist, and today we bring you some of his best mature work, his 2001 tribute, The Model. How cleverly he imitates the style of the great artists! See them all now by clicking here.
Important recent updates
✨ Illustrator and portfolio lists
One of the most common requests we get (and the responses to the recent questionnaire confirm this) is that it would be really useful to have complete listings of all the artists and portfolios on the website – as of May 2026 728 artists and 2,003 portfolios!
So we’ve listened and heard … and by following this link you will find files with these listings in alphabetical order (and where there are several portfolios with the same name their artists will be in order too). The lists are in PDF format, so you can download, save and search them. They duplicate what you can already find in the artist and portfolio listings on the website, but if you’re really into erotic art and illustration and would like a quick ready reference, you should find these invaluable. Enjoy!
✨ Helping you to find your way around
You asked for it, we’ve done it – all the artists on the site now have a set of ‘Similar artists’ links at the end of their biography, so whether it’s bookplate artists, spanking artists, gay artists, whatever, you can cruise easily from artist to similar artist. Have fun!
✨ Hans-Jürgen Döpp, 1940–2025
Few people have shared their wisdom, experience – and wonderful collection of erotic art – more than Hans-Jürgen Döpp, who sadly died last year at the age of 84. For more than half a century Hans-Jürgen devoted himself to the study and collection of erotic art, not as a marginal curiosity or a private indulgence, but as an essential part of human culture. Through his work as a scholar, teacher, curator, author and collector, he helped establish erotic art as a serious field of artistic and historical enquiry. He was an enthusiastic supporter of honesterotica, sharing more than 200 of his portfolios with us, helping to make the website a unique resource of erotic art that would otherwise have been lost to the world. Read our tribute to Hans-Jürgen here.
✨ The difficult mirror
Artists, childhood, and the challenge of looking
At a time of growing concern about online child safety, we are very aware of how we handle the sensitive subject of depictions of children in art, especially ‘erotic art’. We have added an important Themes and Topics article here, which helps explore how artists over time have depicted naked children, and why it is as important to think seriously about what art is for and how we look at and experience it as about what is actually being depicted. Read the piece and see what you think.